Reporting for Duty, SIR!

Note: Meant to update before heading out of town, but ran out of time. Will check in on the below-mentioned a-Dad and meet my birthmom for first time. Have spent several days battling INTENSE desire to cancel trip. Filled with dread, as I usually am at the prospect of spending time with my so-called "father." Leroy Dissing blew me away in his comment about Stockholm Syndrome to this post (also see below). I'll write about this on my return. I think he's absolutely right. That in my case, and under certain circumstances, it's possible to feel like you've been "kidnapped" by the family of genetic strangers that was chosen for you.


Also: Reporting for duty, Maam!

Why did it take four agonizing decades to acknowledge that I had MAJOR issues with being adopted?

Why, in my early twenties, did I write a letter to the editor of a national newspaper in which I (a) scolded adoptees who searched for their birthfamilies; (b) expressed my undying gratitude and love for my adoptive parents; (c) defended the sanctity of adoption...

WHEN, during that same time, my adoptive parents were acting especially ODIOUS, threatening to cut me off emotionally and financially if I went away to college?

WHY did I repeatedly shrug my shoulders and tell friends being adopted was no big deal?

WHY did I tell friends I never thought of my birthmother when I did?

Why did I agree to enslave myself to a narcissistic adoptive father and selfish adoptive mother?

These questions continue to haunt me.

And then, just the other day, I was listening to producer Rory Kennedy talk about her new documentary about Abu Ghraib and the torture and prisoner abuse that happened there at the hands of American soldiers. She mentioned Yale psychologist Stanley Millgram's classic (and controversial) experiment on obedience to authority. The tests measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.

Mmmm.

Substitute needy adoptive parents in the role of the guy with the white lab coat and now we're talking. If the participants in the obedience study were willing, although some were uncomfortable, to zap another person just because they were told to do so by a stranger, just imagine how a child might react to the spoken and unspoken messages of that ultimate of authority figures: the parent?

It's NO WONDER it took so long to overcome years and years of all the pressure, the secrecy, the half-truths and denial about adoption.

We don't talk about that. It's bad. If you talk about it, you are hurting your mother. You are ungrateful. You owe us. If you ask questions, you will make your mother cry. "The woman who made you" isn't your real mother. She's a tramp. In front of outsiders, let's pretend that you are not adopted and tell people that you look like your dead grandmother.

All of those messages - the ones said and those more subtly relayed by body language and silences and meaningful stares - demanded obedience. What other choice did we have?

This also constituted brainwashing.

Factor in society's general ignorance about what it's like to be adopted (You were Chosen! You are Special! You should be Happy! You Should Be Grateful! If you are not Happy or Grateful, You are Maladjusted and you "shouldn't get hung up on the past and get on with your life").

Is it any wonder that so many of us - those raised by undereducated parents or parents who's needs outweigh the best interests of the child - have spent so many years feeling lost and confused and conflicted until...finally...one day, we just can't do it anymore. We can't pretend. Not one more second or minute.

Being adopted by Adoption Deniers means getting brainwashed. If you had the lousy luck of landing THOSE kinds of parents, it means you will be programmed to obey if you're ever going to survive. It means reporting for duty the very second you are handed over into their eager arms. You will be asked to sacrifice your true self, your history. None of that will be important. What is important is that you go along with the fiction of their telling. For they are in control. You are but a child who will grow up and ignore the little voices that say, No wait, that's not how I feel. That's not what I want. But the brainwashing is constant and powerful.

It feels GREAT to deprogram.